Memory improvement mantra

All Stage Presentations include a 15 minute pre-show interactive discussion, a one hour performance, followed by a 15 minute post-show discussion, and a teacher resource guide. In this New York Times bestseller set during the Civil Rights Movement, a young girl's search for the truth about her mother leads her to three beekeeping sisters and the discovery of the real meaning of family. Dakota Fanning’s no longer the cutie-patootie we all remember from movies like “I Am Sam” and “Uptown Girls.” She’s all grown up with a bright future still ahead of her.
In “Bees,” Fanning plays Lily Owens, a young girl living in South Carolina in 1964 who runs away from home to find the truth about her deceased mother. It’s a heavy burden to live with knowing you are responsible for your own mother’s death, but deep down Lily believes there is more to the story.
In Tiburon, they find the home of the Boatwright sisters: June (Alicia Keys), May (Academy Award nominee Sophie Okonedo), and August (Academy Award nominee Queen Latifah), who are well known in the South for the amazing honey they produce as beekeepers. UCLA alumna Gina Prince-Bythewood almost missed her chance to write the script for the new movie everyone's buzzing about. For writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood '91, her latest film seems like it was meant to, well, bee. The story of a troubled white girl finding refuge with three African-American sisters who run a honey business, The Secret Life of Bees opens Oct.
The students will go to Briarcliff High School to watch Wilbanks perform a section of the book, with verbatim dialogue from the text, as she brings the popular novel to life with her talent, a scant set and perhaps two props. The solo show, which is intended for audiences of middle and high school students, will debut on April 27 in Manhattan at the New York Society for Ethical Culture as part of a benefit event for the American Place Theatre’s Literature for Life program. Luckily, it seems the beginning of her journey through adolescence will not follow the same path as Haley Joel Osment in “Secondhand Lions.” After “The Secret Life of Bees” Fanning is sure to find more acting work.

Traveling with her nanny Rosaleen (Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson), who she helps escape from police after they arrest her for a run-in with some short-tempered racists, Lily is determined to know more about her mother’s life before Lily, at the age of four, accidentally shoots and kills her.
It’s a story, unfortunately, her emotionally abusive and neglectful father (Paul Bettany) refuses to tell her. Here, Lily and Rosaleen make a temporary home by telling little white lies so the Boatwrights will allow them to stay in their guest house.
We especially see that in Okonedo’s May, whose hypersensitivity always gets the best of her. Instead, the ensemble cast of “Bees” depicts some powerful characteristics and does so without overstating their motives.
After all, adapting the best-selling novel The Secret Life of Bees for the big screen was a honey of an assignment — from the moving story set in the South in 1964 to the mostly female dream cast that includes Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning.
A Bees movie was in pre-production, and Prince-Bythewood felt stung — another director was making "her" film.
This character reminded me a lot of Wes Bentley’s persona in “American Beauty” because of how they both wear their hearts on their sleeves. It’s a breath of fresh air when we see real African American characters that mean something more than the cliche, thoughtless material Tyler Perry usually flings at us twice a year. The South Carolina-set tale, which also stars Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo, was shot last winter in North Carolina on an $11-million budget. In the Secret Life of the Bees, the author puts a spin on the novel by keeping it suspenseful and unpredictable. Tiburon turns out to be a small town in South Carolina, so, on a whim, Lily and Rosaleen hitch a ride to see what a change in locale has in store for them.

While Bentley’s Ricky Fitts becomes choked up with all the beauty there is in the world, May reacts the same way to all of life’s drawbacks.
The timing of the 34-day shoot wasn't lost on the cast and crew — it was election primary season, when Barack Obama won big in South Carolina.
Keeping a reader interested and dumbfounded on the outcome of events is what makes a fine novel.
One question that comes to mind is, how a specific chain of events would be different, if one or more actions taken or event that took place were changed?
Given the power to do so, the first thing in the novel that I would change would be the relationship between Zach and Lily. The difference in their skin color set up a boundary that no one dared to cross; interracial relationships.
I believe that no one should be split apart from a person they have feelings for, regardless the circumstances. The bitter and harsh society that Lily lived in would have learned a thing or two from the loving relationship she would have with Zach. They would realize that life is much easier when different people intermingle, instead of tear away from each other.
Lily would have been much happier if she had someone like Zach along her side to help her through out the novel as she matured.
Another alternative I would have liked to see would have been a better father-daughter relationship between T.